1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a control device, method and computer program product for browsing data in order to share information efficiently about articles designed using 3-D CAD (Computer Aided Design) system.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is thought to design image-creating devices such as photocopiers, facsimiles, and printers by using 3-D CAD systems, and to share the design information among multiple users. In this case, the data sizes of the design information made by 3-D CAD systems often become as large as a few hundred MB. On the other hand, in design section, it is demanded to efficiently share design information, in order to make it easy for managers to check information in progress, or in order to use data of related products, units, and components made by other design sections. In addition, in service and sales departments, the sharing of design information is also demanded to make it easy to check the shape of products, units, and components.
So far, however, the sharing of design information with large amount of data has been difficult because of restrictions on many aspects such as the rate of data transfer in network, the capacity of storage, and the performance of computers that each user uses.
One way to efficiently share design information is reducing the size of data made by 3-D CAD systems. In this case, the way of relating various kinds of design information is important to efficiently use the shared information.
The present invention has been made in consideration of the above. The present invention relates to a control device for sharing information converted from design information made by 3-D CAD systems. The device enables the shared information to be used more efficiently.